Sensors are widely used in modern systems to measure or detect physical parameters, such as position, motion, force, acceleration, temperature, pressure, etc. While a variety of different sensor types exist for measuring these and other parameters, they all suffer from various limitations. For example, inexpensive low field sensors, such as those used in an electronic compass and other similar magnetic sensing applications generally consist of anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) based devices. In order to arrive at the required sensitivity and reasonable resistances that match well with CMOS, the sensing units of such sensors are generally on the order of square millimeters in size. For mobile applications, such AMR sensor configurations are costly, in terms of expense, circuit area, and power consumption.
Other types of sensors, such as Hall effect sensors, giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sensors, and magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) sensors, have been used to provide smaller profile sensors, but such sensors have their own concerns, such as inadequate sensitivity and being effected by temperature changes. To address these concerns, MTJ sensors and GMR sensors have been employed in a Wheatstone bridge structure to increase sensitivity and to eliminate temperature dependent resistance changes. Many magnetic sensing technologies are inherently responsive to one orientation of applied field, to the exclusion of orthogonal axes. Indeed, two-axis magnetic field sensors have been developed for electronic compass applications to detect the earth's field direction by using a Wheatstone bridge structure for each sense axis.
For example, Hall sensors are generally responsive to out-of-plane field components normal to the substrate surface, while magneto-resistive sensors are responsive to in-plane applied magnetic fields. Utilizing these responsive axes, development of a small footprint three axis sensing solution typically involves a multi chip module with one or more chips positioned at orthogonal angles to one another. For magnetoresistive sensors, the orthogonal in-plane components may be achieved with careful sensor design, but the out-of-plane response is commonly garnered through vertical bonding or solder reflow to contact a secondary chip that has be mounted vertically. As the size of the vertically bonded chip is typically dominated by the pad pitch as determined from the handling constraints, such a technique results in a large vertical extent of the finished package, high die and assembly costs, and makes chip scale packaging difficult and costly as through chip vias must be incorporated.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved design and fabrication process for forming a single chip magnetic sensor that is responsive an applied magnetic field in three dimensions. There is also a need for a three-axis sensor that can be efficiently and inexpensively constructed as an integrated circuit structure for use in mobile applications. There is also a need for an improved magnetic field sensor and fabrication to overcome the problems in the art, such as outlined above. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for purposes of promoting and improving clarity and understanding. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the drawings to represent corresponding or analogous elements.